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U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (right, blue shirt) and NYSUT President Richard Ianuzzi listen to a teacher at a roundtable at NYSUT's Albany headquarters today.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Teamwork was the watchword as U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan took his national back-to-school bus tour to Albany today.

Duncan has taken to the road to celebrate teachers, and to convince them that his reform efforts will not undercut their interests.

In New York, many teachers are still skittish of a new teacher evaluation plan that will, for the first time, allow school districts to judge them based on their students’ test scores. The state and city teachers union struck the agreement with state education officials in May, in part to improve the state’s Race to the Top application.

And so, in appearances at the state teachers union headquarters and the State Capitol, Duncan and state officials emphasized that New York’s reform policies are the result of a team effort between state education officials and its teachers unions. Those policies won the state nearly $700 million in federal Race to the Top funds last week.

“Where other states were not able to reach consensus, New York was,” Duncan said. (more…)

The legislative battle over whether and how to raise the state’s cap on charter schools could begin again as early as next week.

The State Senate’s Rules Committee, which is chaired by Senator Malcolm Smith, introduced a bill today that would lift the charter school cap to 460, more than doubling the number currently allowed under state law.  It also would require schools to make more of their financial practices public and increase the number of special education and English language learners they serve.

Charter school advocates are hailing the bill as a compromise between supporters of the speedy growth of charter schools and critics who argue that a cap lift should come only with changes to how the schools are run. But perhaps the most vocal skeptics of charter management practices, the teachers unions, are crying foul. Union officials are complaining that the bill was developed without union leaders’ input and that its regulatory provisions are too weak. (more…)

Does that April 15 edition of New York Teacher look familiar?

Apparently, the state teachers union didn’t take to Newsweek’s take-down of teachers unions all that kindly. The inside story is a two-page spread written by New York State United Teachers president Dick Iannuzzi on why states looking to reform their school systems need to involve teachers unions.

Major state education stakeholders are funneling money to both sides in the not-yet-official-but-looking-likely gubernatorial primary contest between Governor David Paterson and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

But donors say that although their gifts coincided with increased speculation about Cuomo’s entry into the governor’s race, the donations are more a reflection of what they want to see happen now than a sign they’re taking sides in a future race.

The state teachers union, which vigorously opposed Paterson’s recent attempt to raise the cap on charter schools in the state without additional restrictions, gave $8,400 to Cuomo in the middle of December. That donation followed a $10,000 gift to the attorney general last June.

Union spokesman Carl Korn said that the most recent donation was an indication of support for the attorney generals’ crackdown on predatory lending to students and not a forward-looking political move.

Cuomo has so far kept quiet on his views on charter schools and recently refused to comment on whether he supported Paterson’s push to increase the number of charters allowed under state law. (more…)

New York State United Teachers, the state chapter of the city teachers union, just announced that the union is on the brink of adding about 500 1,200 lifeguards into its fold. The lifeguards used to belong to another union, but they sought out NYSUT hoping it would offer “stronger representation,” according to the press release below.

Most of NYSUT’s 600,000 members are teachers (and most of those are in New York City) but the union also represents some groups that aren’t affiliated with schools, including hospital nurses, group home workers, and day care providers. Read background on how lifeguards got unionized here.

Here’s the NYSUT press release:

Lifeguards join NYSUT seeking a voice, better pay & improved safety
ALBANY, N.Y. February 25, 2009 — Along with their whistles, sun block and rescue buoys, some 1,200 state lifeguards, including nearly 500 who protect beachgoers on Long Island’s shores, will be carrying something else on their stands this summer — a NYSUT union card.

New York State United Teachers announced today that state-employed lifeguards who protect pools, lakes and beaches from Lake Erie to Montauk are affiliating with the 600,000-member union.  The NYSUT Board of Directors will formally vote to accept the new local union — known as the New York State Lifeguard Corps — on Saturday, ending a nearly six-year legal odyssey that started when lifeguards began seeking better pay, improved training and safety equipment, and a voice in their working conditions. (more…)

Here’s an idea for the new president: Make people happy by giving them pennies. According to a story in triptych form by Miah Mansour, a kindergartner at PS 130 (not sure which borough), that’s what it would take to stave off the foreclosure crisis. Miah sent the story, which you can view in full below the jump, to the state teachers union, NYSUT, after it asked schoolchildren to offer advice to Barack Obama. Other letters suggest insulating schools against budget cuts, reducing class sizes, and providing bigger file cabinets for teachers. (Via Edwize) (more…)

Malcolm Smith

NYSUT’s possible endorsement of Republican candidates for State Senate has Democrats worried. Malcolm Smith, Democratic leader of the State Senate, released this statement yesterday:

Senate Democrats are not cutting education funding. The only special interest Senate Democrats care about is New York’s children and we’re going to protect them. The Senate Republicans have been as good for education in New York as Bush has been for the economy. Politician Dean Skelos and the Republican-controlled Senate have protected their special interest fundraising friends instead of taxpayers for 40 years, and now they’re spreading lies because they can’t win with the truth- that they’ve failed New York. This new lie proves it’s really time for change.

In addition to voting on endorsements for 30 Republican candidates, NYSUT board members are also considering endorsing “several Democrats” in state senate races, the Albany Times-Union reports today. “We’re continuing the conversation with leaders of both the parties in the senate,” NYSUT press officer Frank Maurizio just told me.

Voting is underway now on the endorsements, which were released electronically to 70 NYSUT board members, according to the Times-Union. NYSUT staff are reaching out to board members who are on vacation or otherwise unavailable, Maurizio said, and the union anticipates releasing results of the vote by the end of the weekend or Monday.

The state senate chambers

Pledging not to allow any mid-year budget cuts to education has won the Republican leader of the state senate help from the state teachers union, NYSUT. The union is likely to vote tomorrow to endorse 31 Republican senators who are up for reelection Nov. 4, reversing its neutrality on the races. The Buffalo News first reported the likely change.

The interesting education angle here is how much NYSUT apparently fears budget cuts: Financial panic is becoming panic on the schools front, too. In a phone call, NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi just told me that he is open to education cuts in next year’s budget, but he said that schools cannot withstand mid-year cuts. Iannuzzi said he fears mid-year cuts would force teacher layoffs and “chaos” for students. He said the situation would be especially bad in New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg has asked for a 2.5% mid-year cut across the board.

“If you put midyear cuts at the state level on top of midyear cuts at the city level, the city school system would just be crushed,” Ianuzzi told me.

Ianuzzi said he could only recall two cases of mid-year budget cuts at the state level since the 1970s. One was in the 1990-91 school year, when Governor Cuomo proposed $1 billion in mid-year cuts, which became $190 million after legislative intervention. The other was May 2003, when the legislature cut $1 million from education after a recommendation by Governor Pataki.

New York State has the highest local taxes in the nation, prompting Governor Paterson to propose a cap on how much property taxes can be increased for education funding. But how would a tax cap affect public education?

Studies show that tax limitations decrease revenue for public services and are associated with lower student achievement and higher class sizes, according to a briefing paper by the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Research and Information Services.

The briefing paper reviews more than a dozen studies and concludes that state funding does not replace local funding limited by tax caps; in fact, local funding is often used to make up for state funding cuts during economic downturns. Furthermore, tax caps affect poor families and their communities the most, widening inequality. Studies linked tax limitations with lower student achievement, both when comparing districts affected by tax caps to similar districts not affected and when looking at achievement before and after a tax limitation took effect.

Also, according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Massachusetts’ Proposition 2 1/2 made local budgets more dependent on state aid, which fluctuates along with the health of the economy. Prop. 2 1/2 took effect during the “Massachusetts Miracle,” a period of rising state revenues due to economic growth; CBPP warns against enacting a similar law during a slow economy, when state funding is unlikely to make up for local shortfalls. (more…)